Weeknotes – series 07 episode 06

Designing with many dependencies and an unclear scope

Despite the team being under lots of pressure in work. We are starting to pick up new things. I’m really trying to avoid past mistakes (rushing work to catch up with over-promised schedules).

Part of this is making sure I reach out to the team and get their thoughts on how to solve problems. Despite me being good at blogging and tweeting, I know that I’m less good at speaking to the people I work with day-to-day to get their help.

I’ve been doing some high level journey maps to help me think about what each of our users need to do at each phase.

I’ve been stuck on this kind of thing before by focusing too soon on the exact order that things need to be done. But, by grouping things by rough phases, I’ve been able to get beyond the initial paralysis caused by trying to do things in hi-fidelity straight away.

There are a lot of dependencies with this user journey. So I’ve made a plan to show my early, rough designs with various people and teams next week, including the…

  • business analyst and product manager
  • service owner
  • software developers
  • wider interaction design team
  • reference data team

I think I’m happy sharing designs before they are finished, but I’m recognising that I don’t like to share designs before I understand the scope of the work.

In this instance, I think I have to figure out the design and the scope of the work at the same time, so that means lots of iterations, and lots of chatting to people. It feels long-winded, but I know that it’s better to solve these problems sooner rather than later.

I can feel already that sharing in this way is reducing some of the stress that I’m facing.

Accessibility strategy resources

Shaun Conner shared this post: getting to an accessibility strategy. It’s a theme close to my heart, after the time I spent as part of the inclusive design team at UKHSA (The UK Health Security Agency).

I remembered that I’d created a list of accessibility strategy resources on Twitter, so I’m resharing them here, before I lose them.

Bombay Bicycle Club

I’m looking forward to seeing Bombay Bicycle Club this weekend. It’s my first gig of the year. Little disappointed that I didn’t manage one in January in though.

Reading

Bookmarks

Some things I’m saving here to read later…